USAID’s guise is dismantled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it will be adding $230 million to its “economic recovery and development programs in the West Bank and Gaza”. According to USAID’s West Bank and Gaza Mission Director, Amy Tohill-Stull, “This funding demonstrates our resolve to support sustainable development and provide essential services that enhance the quality of life for all Palestinians and further reduce the influence of Hamas.”

Of course, USAID needs to keep up the Hamas narrative so the US government can continue justifying its military and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide – the veto in yesterday’s ceasefire resolution is the latest example of the latter.

But supporting sustainable development and enhancing quality of life? There is not a single humanitarian organisation that can claim to have even got close to either aim, let alone USAID, which was created precisely to enable the US government a smoother transition into foreign interference. In the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, to speak of sustainable development and quality of life speaks volumes about USAID’s motives. Keep up the pretence of Palestinians just needing a sliver of aid, while the US aids Israel in completely destroying Gaza and annihilating Palestinians.

In October this year, it was reported that the US spent $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel in a year – far surpassing the $3.8 billion which Israel gets annually as a result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Obama administration in 2016.

As always, the discrepancy between military funding and aid programs is stark. $230 million does not demonstrate USAID’s resolve – it merely points out that the scale of destruction in Gaza as a result of the US-funded Israeli genocide is being muted down for diplomatic purposes.

Meanwhile, USAID also announced “seven new programs to foster peace between Palestinians and Israelis” under the People to People Partnership for Peace Fund. The idealist concept here completely eliminates the colonial context. There is no “side by side” in colonialism. As for peace under colonialism? Palestinians have experienced, first-hand, the meaning of Israeli peace in terms of extermination and dispossession, and USAID interference in community programs do not empower Palestinians. Working from an allegedly shared space contradicts the meaning of colonial expansion and colonial violence, but the latter exist and are tangible for Palestinians. The program allegedly “advances peaceful coexistence, dialogue and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis”, but all that Palestinians need is decolonisation – a reality which the US and, in turn, USAID, are averse to, as is Israel.

The international community is truly acting as if oblivion can still be the status quo. However, Israel has made it impossible to ignore decades of colonial violence as a result of the genocide in Gaza. USAID’s rhetoric, like that of other institutions that disguise political motives under humanitarian assistance and programs, rings more hollow now. What will $230 million bring to Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank? How do peace programs benefit Palestinians? There is a limit as to how much pretence US democracy – read that as foreign interference – can sustain. What the US and Israel achieved in Gaza has shattered illusions beyond repair.

USAID’s guise is dismantled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza